Besides having all my hair cut off, I was side-tracked on my decluttering project in early July. You see, I took a trip to my home town to visit family for a week, and while I was gone, well, let’s just say my two dogs don’t much like fireworks…

My pet sitter was kind enough to txt me a picture of the damage they did to a wall in the kitchen (picture to follow in another post).

My kitchen was (being the operative word) wallpapered. It has been this way since I bought it 15 years ago and have been wanting to take the paper down and do a plaster finish on the walls and paint instead. So…. you guessed it – my dogs prompted and prioritized that project for me on the evening of July 4th.

I have pictures of the process and will share those in a future post over the next week or two. I am still in the process of finalizing the renovation to the kitchen; getting all the final touch-ups done and pictures hung on the walls. When all is done, I promise a post of the final transformation. 🙂

PS – I am SO glad to finally have the use of my kitchen again!

Stay tuned!

In the meantime, have you had any luck with your decluttering this summer? Tell me what have you done?

Have you had a renovation (minor or major) home improvement project you have been wanting to do? What is holding you back?

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Posted onJuly 12, 2013|Comments Off on I’m Still Here – and still Decluttering!

I know I have been noticably absent from my blog for the past couple of months. Why? Well, the clutter got the best of me.

I my exuberance to declutter closets, cabinets, dressers, etc. I ended up with a dining room overflowing with none other than… CLUTTER! UGH! To complicate matters, I was also holding onto a bunch of things to include in a yard/garage sale that was postponed a couple of times. At least I had put the stuff in boxes and stacked them in a corner, but I still have a LOT of knick-knack items sitting on my buffet in the dining room Why, one would certainly ask…. Well, I got “bit” by the Ebay bugs some time ago, and have been posting things for sale there (as was my intent at the beginning of this blog – post items I think would sell for 30 days and if they don’t off to the second hand shop).

Well, it seems that not very many people were interested in purchasing things on ebay during the second quarter of the year. I have several friends who are also Ebay sellers, and they, too, noticed that there didn’t seem to be many buyers out there.

Plus – I had a couple of trips out of town planned, and do not post items for sale while I am out of town (I have a 1 day shipping policy).

Lastly, the maximum “free” posting items per month on Ebay is 50 (unless you get a special offer to post for free for a designated period by Ebay). So, I tend to only list up to 50 items (this includes repeat listings) a month. Oh, and I can only list them for a maximum of 7 days. Thus, it is taking longer to get my stuff posted on Ebay.

June was a good month, though ! I sold 4 items for over $100 in total receipts! PLUS, I did really well selling my stuff at the yard sale. 🙂

So, that is my excuse, and I am sticking to it!

Fast forward to post July 4th holiday trip. While I was out, my pups were not happy when the fireworks started going off. My petsitter gave them benedryl, and “stress free calmplex”, but they still were NOT HAPPY at all with the booms going off. As a result, they chewed up a wall (yes, a WALL). I will post pictures in my next blogpost of the damage, and the subsequent repairs that I did. Can’t even tell there was a hole in the wall… well, except for the fact that there is no wallpaper on the wall. But that’s okay – I have been wanting to refinish my kitchen walls anyway, with a plaster treatment (sort of like venetian plastering).

What was in there ? Well, the box on the top shelf was filled with miscellaneous sewing stuff. The material items – table clothes. I will go through all this and decide what to do with it, and of course, re-organize what I keep.

The box on the bottom – old costume jewelry. That will be sorted through and put up for sale on ebay/craigslist or in an upcoming garage sale. What doesn’t sell will be donated. 🙂

Pictures? Yes, a few pictures – a couple of my nieces when they were really little, and a couple of art pieces that I need to decide if I want to keep (and if so, where to display them).

This stuff has been residing in this drawer for at least 15 years (since I moved here). Time to get rid of it and off to the recycle it goes! The wine bottle toppers will be placed on ebay, and the rest of the stuff – old, old papers – into the recycle bin they go!

Mmmm, what to do with this empty drawer?

Color coded ribbon storage drawer! 🙂 This ribbon was in a large plastic storage container that is now being used for (wait for it….) – Christmas decoration storage!

Okay – So I admit, I did take a couple of days off from decluttering this weekend.

I did do a bit of work on day 47 and 48, (guest bath closet and cabinet under sink). I also cleaned out and shredded more papers from a small 2 drawer metal filing cabinet (Day 49). I also found a good home for the filing cabinet, a non-profit that my neighbor Mary works with. Day 50, well, let’s just call that a day of rest.

Anyway, I just didn’t post anything the last few days. Here are the after pictures:

Overall, I am doing pretty good in decluttering the house, and am well on my way to being done with it in 365 days. It is amazing how easy it is to declutter one very small area at a time.

Yes, I did skip a few drawers and cabinets in the Den, I will get back to those this week. I just needed a break from all the papers and shredding. Needed a quick declutter project that made me feel like I was making BIG progress (i.e. small declutter projects…) 🙂